Holiday: Shabbat

October 18, 2018

Looking for a simple yet festive centerpiece this holiday season? Look no further, this DIY for copper wire fairy lights is so simple, you've got this! I actually made this plant in a house (it's a green house!) centerpiece for my son's bar mitzvah, and made about 20 of them in no time......the biggest time investment was trying to get all those metal frame houses back home. For the bar mitzvah I bought a bunch of flowering plants and placed them in white ceramic pots that I had on hand from the last bar mitzvah, and the results were gorgeous. Whether or not you can actually get your hands on a house frame like this one (mine was from the local discount store) the most important element here for your holiday centerpiece is the mini-LED fairy lights with copper wire. Some versions of this mini-LED string light are also water proof, meaning you can fill a mason jar or vase with water, attach the battery to the inside lid of the jar, and oh the possibilities! With or without water, wrap these tiny lights around just about anything, or simply place them in a bowl of fruit, and voila, your holiday centerpiece is ready to go. And just by the way, these lights are now available as solar powered mason jar lids which is perfect for an outdoor holiday DIY for mason jar lights project!

Ready to get started with this simple DIY holiday centerpiece using copper wire fairy lights? Let's do it!

May 16, 2018

Aren't these flowers just gorgeous? Now is the time to take a trip to your local nursery, buy some inexpensive pots of flowering plants, and make a gorgeous DIY floral centerpiece. You can assemble a stunning floral arrangemet in minutes that is so budget friendly you'll only buy cut flowers during the winter! Okay, maybe you'd rather spend a small fortune on truly gorgeous bouquets, but around here flowers rarely last more than a week, as opposed to flowering plants that we can enjoy for months. Ah yes, and I just love the natural look of using flowering plants that come with their own greenery!

I actually purchased all these little plants to make centerpieces for my son's bar mitzvah, and after we enjoy them for the holiday of Shavuos, coming up Saturday night, most of them will be planted in my container garden or in a garden that I designed just down the street. Plants raised to be planted in the garden can certainly be enjoyed indoors for a week or two, though likely need the kind of sunlight or light levels generally only found outdoors to keep flowering.

Want to hear some more about how to make a gorgeous centerpiece or centerpieces using small pots of flowers from the nursery? Keep on reading.......

September 18, 2017

Rosh HaShana is Wednesday night, so there is no time like the present to make fun cards for the new year and to keep the kids busy with crafts while you prepare for the holiday! If you are not a mom, so you may have even more time for crafting, and this little craft is fun for adults too......your fish may just look a bit more grown up, or maybe less detailed....you decide!

The tradition of giving cards for Rosh HaShana, to wish others a sweet new year (for starters) is a wonderful one, though we can certainly think a bit outside the box and make cards that are not actually cards, but in this case little stuffed shapes! And if you really want to take this craft one step further, include some little loops of ribbon for hanging before stapling it all together, and then these Rosh HaShana cards can become sukkah decorations as well, yippee!

June 30, 2017

Crocheting with recycled materials is something that I find oh so satisfying, and so you can well imagine that these crocheted kitchen and bath scrubbies made using recycled mesh potato sacks are one of my favorite little projects! With a bag full of potato sacks waiting to be used and a long bus ride to a friend's wedding at hand, this became a fun take-along crochet project, yippee! These scrubbies are great to have on hand, whether for using in the kitchen (I use these as dishwashing sponges on shabbat) or in the bathroom, and you can make them using little scraps of left over yarn. What is not to love? And do check out my previous post, picot trimmed crocheted bath scrubbies using potato sacks as well, if you are looking for something a little less basic for gift giving.

One little disclaimer: that green kitchen scrubbie was actually made using a bag that held fresh almonds, check out my post from years ago here to see that bag in action, and of course similar mesh bags are used to hold other kinds of produce, so upcycle those too!

May 29, 2017

The Jewish holiday of Shavuous, (in which, among other traditions, we decorate our homes with flowers and greenery to celebrate the receiving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai) is tomorrow night, so with the idea of some really large felt flower napkin rings for our holiday table in mind, yet not a lot of time, I knew I needed a felt flower that would be quick to make and great looking! A quick felt flower is without a doubt one made by rolling a strip of felt, yet that are many variations on the technique with quite different looking results. (I've made felt rose buds, way back when, another flower type to combine with this one, if you like!)

The felt chrysanthemum made from one long strip of fringed loops came to mind, and after a bit of experimenting I was sold. In fact so much so that I used up almost all of a large bag of felt scraps and yardage that had been hanging out for way too many years, yippee! (Note: I do have a large blister on my middle finger from the scissors and all that cutting, such is the price......it nicely compliments the hot glue gun blister on my ring finger!)

I ended up settling on using grey felt for the napkin ring flowers, as that will look the best on my white table with lots of cobalt blue Moroccan dishes, the ones made with pink and yellow and blue ended up being used for a really cute felt flower decoration for the front door, which I will be sharing shortly.

Want to make some of these fun felt chrysanthemums too? If you've got ten minutes or so and felt and hot glue on hand, then lets get started!

March 28, 2017

One of my dear nephews from New York was coming for his last shabbat with us before heading back to the USA after a two year stint in Israel, so I just had to make him a good-bye cake! The only problem was that the house had been turned upside down with Pesach cleaning, we had some construction done which added a layer of ground dust to the upside down state, I had to go to a Bar Mitzvah celebration Thursday night, we were loosing a hour due to turning the clocks ahead.........oh, and of course the cake and the cake decorations had to be made before sundown on Friday, phew.

Quck and cute is my motto, and sometimes you just gotta lower your standard, or you might miss an opportunity to make someone feel special, right? Keep on reading for a few tips that I'll use next tiem I need to make cake decorations in a pinch!

March 02, 2017

It is purely by accident that this post showing you how to make wonderful paper poppies in just a few simple steps follows my post sharing with you the real thing now in bloom on our grassy hillsides! I actually made these simple DIY paper poppies two weeks ago for a women's gathering in our community, and well, as you know life is busy and at present time I only get around to photographing maybe half of what I actually make! I'm hoping the other half will eventually end up in a book or series of some kind, but don't hold your breath as I haven't been able to magically add more time to the day.

Speaking of time, these paper poppies which can be made in many sizes are really quite quick once you get the hang of it, and you could make quite a few of these to use as centerpieces for an event with say ten or even twenty tables. Enlist the help of two friends, set aside two evenings, and voila, gorgeous and original centerpieces will grace every table. Send the flowers home with guests, or keep them for another occasion, nicely wrapped up to keep them dust free.

I have actually made giant versions of these, (link to follow) but this time I needed something medium sized for a reception table. Ready? No special supplies needed! Okay lets get started:

December 10, 2016

This simple havdalah spice pouch project is perfect to give as a little party favor this holiday season, and fun to whip up as well. For those who aren't familiar with havdalah, it is the ceremony that is performed Saturday night to usher out the 25 hour period we call shabbat or shabbos. In the havdalah ceremony three blessings are made on material things, one on wine, one on fire, and one on spices. After the blessing is made on the spices all of those where are present sniff the spices, which might be in the form of fresh herbs (in our home we generally use cuttings from my lemon verbena plant) dried spices, or a fragrant natural oil of some kind. The most popular and convenient option is to use dried spices, so these little bags are certainly sweet and useful!

And of course, one could also use this idea to make little lavender sachets to put in drawers, how about that?

This project is brought to you by sewjewish.com, so I'll stop talking and present you with this fun DIY havdalah spice pouch craft:

July 28, 2016

A ceramic fish plate and some little ceramic fish that could be used as chop stick rests are really truly adorable, and so festive, don't you think? My twelve year old son made this set, which was originally supposed to be a mobile of sorts, but I love them too much as if to think about stringing them together somehow! And with Rosh HaShana a little more than two months aways, thinking about crafts for the Jewish new year is a great thing to do right about now! And whether or not you have access to a ceramics studio and a kiln, you can still make something similar, so lets get started.

June 21, 2016

Today there was a student show at the ceramic studio where my son and I spend time together creating with clay each week, and I just had to share with you some of the fantastic work we saw. For starters I just love the ceramic tzedaka (charity) boxes that kids made (that would also make fabulous ceramic banks as well) after the teacher gave them the assignment to make a tzedaka box in any shape they desired. I don't know if I would have thought of a vase of flowers tzedaka box, or an apple tzedaka box, or even a tea cup tzedaka box. There was even a fantastic clay spray bottle tzedaka box, which I didn't get a chance to photograph. The tzedaka box is a fixture in every traditional Jewish home, and in every synagogue, but they are usually boxes, possibly lovely boxes, but boxes just the same, so I am totally in awe of the creativity!

At the show we truly witnessed what a wonderful medium ceramics in general can be for expressing and developing creativity, and my two kids who do not (yet) go with Mommy to the ceramics studio were really quite jealous. So I guess I have a few more years of creating with clay to look forward to. Hmmmm, maybe I should make a set of dishes then, right?